Mark,
A UK-based children's museum asked me about creating an e-card system for
them. I advised them to be cautious for reasons I will explain.
I don't think the SPAM problem is really too much of an issue -- from a
technical perspective it is not difficult to stop someone who might, for
instance, write a programming script to send lots of email messages via the
e-card system.
What concerns me more are the legal and PR issues that could arise from
such as system. As your IT consultant has pointed out, someone could use
such a system to send cards anonymously, or so that they appear to be from
someone else. Potentially, such messages could be libelous. I believe there
is some precedent in UK law for the transmitter of such a message to be
legally responsible for it, not the (anonymous) sender. In the case of the
children's museum as an example of a problem that might arise I suggested a
child might send anonymous messages via the system accusing a teacher of
something so serious that it might damage his/her career. Such a teacher
could accuse the museum of not having controls in place to prevent such an
event occurring, which might result in bad publicity and/or legal action
against the museum. You might think that this kind of thing would be
extremely unlikely, but there was a case some years ago where children made
serious allegations against a teacher on an internet chat board, and in
that case the service provider was found to be legally responsible
(although the case was not as simple as I've described it here).
Of course, with a children's museum there is perhaps a need to be more
cautious than for other types of organisation. But I believe your IT
specialist is right to err on the side of caution and to make you aware of
the problems that might arise from such a system.
I hope this helps.
James Johnson
Publitek New Media Ltd.
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